PnP in NW

xearrik · December 2012

The addition of the foundry to this game allows for some unique onine game play not really possible before.

So I would like to DM and see others DM PnP style games. Here is example of what I'm talking about.

You have a group of players get together after a the DM has designed a series of quests in game, and the out of combat content that usually comes in a PnP session. The party then streams their gaming session live and uses a voice chat program to communicate with the DM. When all of the out of combat content is being played the DM takes notes and does his job either steering them towards the quests he has made or taking a short break and adjusting the quests to the parties actions.

You could use fully created and leveled characters. Or even run an entire campaign with fresh new characters that the DM will authorize you to raise to a certain level before the next gaming sessions. If they allow in quest equipment to be created that drops on exit. You could even add some rare items that are found outside of combat. Putting them in the beginning of the quest to be found and equipped before the session starts.

How do you all you old PnP players like me feel about this idea. I will personally design and run some sessions like this when the game is released.

freekimdotcom · December 2012

Unfortunately, because of the nature MMOGs, NWO is not the right type of game for this feature. If you would like to DM a live session then a game like Neverwinter Nights or Neverwinter Nights 2 would be better.

If you have not come to the conclusion yet, then I'll oblige by informing you that Neverwinter Online is an Action MMORPG that uses the names and trademarks of D&D while not actually staying true to the pen and paper format of game play.

ruinedmirage · December 2012

To my knowledge, once you (as a Foundry mission author) submit your quest, you're not allowed to modify any further. Not on-the-fly with player involvement, nor after it has gone through the required 5 volunteer testers. After the volunteers have run your quest and rated it for approval, THEN your players would get to search for it and run it. So if you're thinking of polishing some quests particularly for a customized group, it's unlikely it'll see their hands exclusively.

I had the same notion when I first looked at the game, though. Like being a DM for a pnp game, and the character model you played was the character sheet that you could progress even when you weren't in a game session with a group. But we as players and writers are crafty! I'm sure we'll find some sort of loophole along the way. I mean, we've been playing D&D this whole time, right?

xearrik · December 2012

This makes me sad. I was hoping for a bit more freedom with quests I created. Such as the ability to make a quest for only private use with far more restrictions to prevent exploits. And the ability to invite friends in to play test it with me before I submit it. and of course the ability to make small tweaks to a quest already submitted.

I thought of running campaign in games such as NWN but I thought it would be interesting in an actual MMORPG. Since you already have a large pool of players to chose from.

guriphu · December 2012

Making small tweaks (or total reworkings) of submitted quests is present in the STO foundry and I am confident that it will be present for Neverwinter's as well. You just cannot modify quests while they are in use; they must be re-submitted, overwriting the old quest.

ambisinisterr · December 2012

The ability to actively DM and Give items are two very big No-No's in Neverwinter. As Freekimdotcom said because this is an MMO balanace is a huge concern and we wouldn't want over-rewarding content creators to ruin the content of others.

However, as disappointing as this may seem there is a lot of silver lining. First and formost is the fact the Foundry is far more user friendly than the Aurora Engines so the average person will be able to make Foundry Quests. This is NOT something that was possible in NWN 1 & 2.

While pre-submitted test runs haven't been confirmed for launch I think that would be a great feature to suggest. I'm not sure if it's possible to create at all but knowing the meticulousness of the D&D Community I know such a feature would be widely used!
Even if it's not added though, as guriphu stated, you will still be able to tweek the final outcome even after submission but sadly it would result in a loss of previous progress.

Also, while we will be limited by balance in the start Cryptic Studios CEO, Jack Emmert, has discussed his desire to give more freedom over time. He expressed that it may be possible, in the future, to allow more power to creators but prevent rewards from being mixed in with those of the rest of the MMO. Any such feature to allow, for example Monty Haul quests, would be a long ways off but it's not something which we're being given a flat no response to. The initial release will lack features we wished we had but unlike NWN we can expect the Foundry Tools to be ever-expanding.

kamaliicious · December 2012

xearrik wrote: »

This makes me sad. I was hoping for a bit more freedom with quests I created. Such as the ability to make a quest for only private use with far more restrictions to prevent exploits. And the ability to invite friends in to play test it with me before I submit it. and of course the ability to make small tweaks to a quest already submitted.

I thought of running campaign in games such as NWN but I thought it would be interesting in an actual MMORPG. Since you already have a large pool of players to chose from.

NWN1/2 Persistant Worlds give you a pool of players. Not as large as an MMO. They give the ability to live DM as well.

syfylis · December 2012

Well i had that idea long time ago that you go to tavern and you sit down to table with your party members and start playing pnp game. Party master become GM. You could swap game board and chose edition of dnd, all with supported ingame voice communicator and chat.

Cryptic could make even money on this if you have like 3 maps for F2P and new ones from item mall. I don't play pnp so I don't care but some people could like it.

giggliato · December 2012

On the fly editing is possible I think, but not quite yet realtime. Also the devs are working on collaborative quest making which could be tweaked to support the OP's idea, but not at launch. But it does sound neat.

princesslune · December 2012

So I've been sort of digging through old posts and going over some of the foundry stuff. I just started using the Foundry in STO, and I feel like I understand where if you played NWN or PnP D&D that this is probably a huge let down but I'm going to say something here that might change your mind a bit and maybe make it less disappointing. So something i've noticed in STO is that some people make missions specifically for fleet oriented events, these don't get voted up via the ranking system because they're generally for private use. If you change the way you approach it you CAN set things up ahead of time with the dialogue editor and the story editor and become almost an incorporeal DM. This has some advantages, you can easily now play a character rather than spending your time being the DM (let the game engine do the work) but it does take some getting used to and you do sort of have to think around the lack of freedom of the original toolset. Although I do think that if cryptic had a way to allow party leaders to assign level appropriate loot and to create named items (even if they were linked to a specific guild and governed by the MMO's rules) that this would help greatly in the classic RP experience. Will it be exactly like the NWN experience? No Will you enjoy the hell out of it? most likely.

ambisinisterr · December 2012

Something very important to note princesslune is that The Foundry got a massive overhaul. At it's core it will be similar to what we see in STO but they have spent many months improving The Foundry in many different ways.

It still won't be the Aurora Toolset but it's not going to be as limited as the STO Version.

iamtruthseeker · December 2012

ambisinisterr wrote: »

Something very important to note princesslune is that The Foundry got a massive overhaul. At it's core it will be similar to what we see in STO but they have spent many months improving The Foundry in many different ways.

It still won't be the Aurora Toolset but it's not going to be as limited as the STO Version.

From what I read and tried on S 6-7's release publicly, a lot of the stuff released on STO was what was promised for NWO, so I doubt the Foundry here will have few to any things new they haven't already tried.

Except theme of course.

princesslune · December 2012

ambisinisterr wrote: »

Something very important to note princesslune is that The Foundry got a massive overhaul. At it's core it will be similar to what we see in STO but they have spent many months improving The Foundry in many different ways.

It still won't be the Aurora Toolset but it's not going to be as limited as the STO Version.

I actually don't find the STO foundry limiting. My perspective thus far has been that the Cryptic Foundry (in general) is at least as revolutionary to me as the original NWN Toolset was. That is to say that while they may not be identical in feature set, I believe history will ultimately show that Cryptic has found the right way of doing this sort of thing in an MMO environment. In the future we'll all point to the Foundry and say "ya well cryptic did it right back in 2012, and your'e gonna screw it up now!"

xearrik · December 2012

One of the most needed features is the ability to play test your quest with others. I don't see why they wouldn't put it in as soon as possible if its not already planned. If your creating a quest for a party of 5, It hardly seems right testing it by your lonesome. And so long as they have this feature, or add it sometime in the future. Setting up a private play session with some friends in an access restricted quest would be possible.

remedialhappyman · December 2012

xearrik wrote: »

One of the most needed features is the ability to play test your quest with others. I don't see why they wouldn't put it in as soon as possible if its not already planned. If your creating a quest for a party of 5, It hardly seems right testing it by your lonesome. And so long as they have this feature, or add it sometime in the future. Setting up a private play session with some friends in an access restricted quest would be possible.

To be fair the entire point of having premade groups that drop loot is that you don't need to test it for five people.

The point of the testing is to run the dungeon for yourself and see if the quest flow feels right, if you need to add an encounter here or remove one there. You wont really be able to adjust the difficulty of the dungeon since all the groups of monsters and bosses will be pre-generated.

Also I remember reading that what you have in your dungeon will determine the difficulty in the search function.

I could be completely misinformed on that though.

princesslune · December 2012

I can tell you that in STO if i use a Borg encounter that my mission will be locked at level 41+ If that's what you're referring to.
Some of the groups have hard level caps at least in STO.

remedialhappyman wrote: »

To be fair the entire point of having premade groups that drop loot is that you don't need to test it for five people.

The point of the testing is to run the dungeon for yourself and see if the quest flow feels right, if you need to add an encounter here or remove one there. You wont really be able to adjust the difficulty of the dungeon since all the groups of monsters and bosses will be pre-generated.

Also I remember reading that what you have in your dungeon will determine the difficulty in the search function.

I could be completely misinformed on that though.

remedialhappyman · December 2012

princesslune wrote: »

I can tell you that in STO if i use a Borg encounter that my mission will be locked at level 41+ If that's what you're referring to.
Some of the groups have hard level caps at least in STO.

Yeah thats basically what I meant. The adventure is going to be restricted to a level depending on what pre-gened encounters you use to ensure that people will be able to complete it with an appropriate amount of difficulty.

The system is made to be easy so you don't have to worry about stuff like that when your making your adventure. Granted it would eb fantastic if there was an easy way to share your adventure before releasing it.

iamtruthseeker · December 2012

Allegedly they have fixed this STO ranking locked difficulty, and it should scale depending on the players' or group's total level. Allegedly.

Even so, it still is a different game when you play a mod solo compared to when you play it with another or another ship load-out style.

Now switch that around with D&D different classes and group additions that have wildly different power attacks. Will a cleric play like a fighter? No. But one could swap the test unit (or respec I guess they'd call it) for another to make sure.
But one cannot "respec" a group of up to four more of varying classes working in co-op tandem to make sure what you thought was a "challenging encounter" truly scales up with a group. Short of that preview group that looks for illegal stuff and just maybe basic play-ability there really isn't any group that "pre tests" said mods before they are released then forevermore rated." And making said mod, storing a copy, and deleting it, making revisions to copy and publishing that one even if done for this reason still doesn't seem ethical.

So short of getting a trial by fire ratings and feedback, there is no "playtest editing" that I saw for the current system.

Still, I do encourage potential authors to try their hand in the Foundry to get acclimated to many features offered!

Heck, if you play, do try the game too just to get used to the Cryptic UI basics too! But if you don't like it for the genre or feel of the setting, that's fine too.

xearrik · December 2012

remedialhappyman wrote: »

To be fair the entire point of having premade groups that drop loot is that you don't need to test it for five people.

The point of the testing is to run the dungeon for yourself and see if the quest flow feels right, if you need to add an encounter here or remove one there. You wont really be able to adjust the difficulty of the dungeon since all the groups of monsters and bosses will be pre-generated.

Also I remember reading that what you have in your dungeon will determine the difficulty in the search function.

I could be completely misinformed on that though.

I was going to counter your comment, but iamtruthseeker said most of what I was already going to say. So I only have to add a couple of extra points.

One person cant test if an encounter is or isn't challenging to a group. A single cleric healing a fighter increases the fighters potential many folds. Now add 3 other people to the group. If the quest adjusts the difficulty of the encounters based on how many people are in the dungeon that helps, but you still wont really know. I also don't see what you mean by saying the difficulty cant be adjusted. Just putting a group of mobs in a different location changes the difficulty. You can also add multiple encounters into a single room. Then decrease the size of that room. Plus you get to determine the types of groups you want to add. All those things and many more can make for wildly different difficulties. To the point where it would be nearly impossible for a single person to finnish the encounter, but only challenging for a group.

hippyo · December 2012

Strategic aspects will be part of the pollish that might or might not be done after release. First of all, encounters will be single encounters, and the monsters mad up of a pool computed by the engine. So you might get casters if you spawn with a tank, or alternately devils if you use a wizard. The mobs will also scale with your playerlevel, meaning that different versions of every mob will appear. Heaping up encounters could be a problem the engine can not solve. I don't think they will let you heap up encounters like that , or all encounters of a single room will spawn together, sadly missing some of the mobs you meticulously placed.

The point of ugc missions is to put them up for testing by the community. You can then take your group on the first run of your new quest. As it will be instanced, there will be no way to prevent other groups from doing the same.

ruinedmirage · December 2012

hippyo wrote: »

The point of ugc missions is to put them up for testing by the community. You can then take your group on the first run of your new quest. As it will be instanced, there will be no way to prevent other groups from doing the same.

I'll have to disagree with you on this one. I think the UGC is basically for the community as a whole to play, rather than a specific group. For example, say you put a bunch of dialog referencing specific names of part of "your group's" journey. What's the rest of the player base going to say about that? "Who the heck is WizardBob?" "What the heck are they talking about in this plot?" "I don't recognize any of this from D&D canon." "How come this starts in the middle of another storyline?" End result = low rating.

The unfortunate part is that since you're playing the role as a single unique character, MOST Foundry missions are going to have to be careful around the narrative driven formula. I'm expecting many of the missions to be simple fetchquests, with a few bright stars in there.

My point is, narrative is great and there can be great potential for the Foundry, but unless something drastically changes (adding live DMs), trying to make exclusive adventures can be a downfall to getting high ratings for the overall public. And a first impression is a lasting impression, especially in the case of authors.

princesslune · December 2012

ruinedmirage wrote: »

I'll have to disagree with you on this one. I think the UGC is basically for the community as a whole to play, rather than a specific group. For example, say you put a bunch of dialog referencing specific names of part of "your group's" journey. What's the rest of the player base going to say about that? "Who the heck is WizardBob?" "What the heck are they talking about in this plot?" "I don't recognize any of this from D&D canon." "How come this starts in the middle of another storyline?" End result = low rating.

The unfortunate part is that since you're playing the role as a single unique character, MOST Foundry missions are going to have to be careful around the narrative driven formula. I'm expecting many of the missions to be simple fetchquests, with a few bright stars in there.

My point is, narrative is great and there can be great potential for the Foundry, but unless something drastically changes (adding live DMs), trying to make exclusive adventures can be a downfall to getting high ratings for the overall public. And a first impression is a lasting impression, especially in the case of authors.

Modules which are created for specific single purpose campaigns or use by private groups will most likely never be voted up. I don't think it matters. Not everyone is going to use the toolset the same way. Over the years i've been consistenly amazed at the ability of users to overcome the limitations of these types of tool-sets to tell really good stories. I would have to disagree with you on the idea that D&D is about canon. Certainly Neverwinter being placed within Forgotten Realms some players will expect UGC content to mostly be centered around events within FR. However, I don't think that D&D is mostly about canon, in the way that say Star Trek, Star Wars and other "brand universes" are truly about canon. I've heard in a few videos so far of cryptic giving demonstrations at various cons the statement "D&D is all about forgotten realms, if you love forgotten realms you'll love this game". I think THAT statement is more worrysome. Certainly D&D is NOT "all about forgotten realms" its' about telling a story effectively and certainly the direction toward the D20 system has proven that it can be a system applied to many genres. To me coming up with unique stories and teling them well to entertain people goes back to the days of when we used to tell stories to one another. I suspect taht while Cryptic may fail in SOME areas, that they will deliver something very useful that we will all enjoy and I personally am looking forward to creating new UGC content for everyone (but don't expect it all to take place in FR!)

ruinedmirage · December 2012

princesslune wrote: »

Modules which are created for specific single purpose campaigns or use by private groups will most likely never be voted up. I don't think it matters. Not everyone is going to use the toolset the same way. Over the years i've been consistenly amazed at the ability of users to overcome the limitations of these types of tool-sets to tell really good stories. I would have to disagree with you on the idea that D&D is about canon. Certainly Neverwinter being placed within Forgotten Realms some players will expect UGC content to mostly be centered around events within FR. However, I don't think that D&D is mostly about canon, in the way that say Star Trek, Star Wars and other "brand universes" are truly about canon. I've heard in a few videos so far of cryptic giving demonstrations at various cons the statement "D&D is all about forgotten realms, if you love forgotten realms you'll love this game". I think THAT statement is more worrysome. Certainly D&D is NOT "all about forgotten realms" its' about telling a story effectively and certainly the direction toward the D20 system has proven that it can be a system applied to many genres. To me coming up with unique stories and teling them well to entertain people goes back to the days of when we used to tell stories to one another. I suspect taht while Cryptic may fail in SOME areas, that they will deliver something very useful that we will all enjoy and I personally am looking forward to creating new UGC content for everyone (but don't expect it all to take place in FR!)

This is a good point. But I am questionable about how the players will receive the non-FR-related content. Reasons? Despite how many gaming sites I go to and no matter how many "what games to look forward to in 2013" lists I check out, Neverwinter is nowhere to be found (and there are quite a few, even some MMO exclusive!). This leads me to believe that the ones that DO know about NWO are old-school pnp players that are interested in D&D affairs and games in general (majority, actually) or MMO regulars that have heard about it in passing. Sure, NWO may boast some awards from cons and shows, but I'll truly be impressed when the next time I mention Neverwinter Online, the respondent doesn't scratch their head and go, "Huh?"

Hence, regarding the player base and rating system of Foundry quests. I'm sure many of us are open-minded to new adventures, but I hope that for every one of us, there's not a canon-HAMSTER tester ready to correct us in D&D lore, like accidentally putting "your" into a meme when it was supposed to be "you're".

princesslune · December 2012

ruinedmirage wrote: »

\
Hence, regarding the player base and rating system of Foundry quests. I'm sure many of us are open-minded to new adventures, but I hope that for every one of us, there's not a canon-HAMSTER tester ready to correct us in D&D lore, like accidentally putting "your" into a meme when it was supposed to be "you're".

Ya really. Sometimes "hey you spelled that wrong" feedback is great, but not when it feels like someone is simply picking a nit.
I do know quite a few people who are eagerly awaiting the release of this game, but it does seem to be limited somewhat to
the PnP crowd. Although lately I have to say I usually play DDO and it's been a ghost town, makes me wonder if some of that
fan base won't come over to NWO.

hippyo · December 2012

Goodness me. Misspelled something there, sorry.
NWO will be a community-driven world with public quests open to everybody. Privately owned persistent worlds are history ! What makes this so exiting is the prospect of Wysiwig editing the world together with thousands of co-authors. Something that has never been attempted before. And millions of players will be able to consume that content.

stormdrag0n · December 2012

hippyo wrote: »

Goodness me. Misspelled something there, sorry.
NWO will be a community-driven world with public quests open to everybody. Privately owned persistent worlds are history ! What makes this so exiting is the prospect of Wysiwig editing the world together with thousands of co-authors. Something that has never been attempted before. And millions of players will be able to consume that content.

Well technically STO has attempted it and are not doing too shabby but cryptic has always said that the STO foundry is the ultra light version of the Neverwinter foundry.

princesslune · December 2012

stormdrag0n wrote: »

Well technically STO has attempted it and are not doing too shabby but cryptic has always said that the STO foundry is the ultra light version of the Neverwinter foundry.

If crytic claims this to be true, oh wow, I love the STO foundry. Neverwinter's must be incredible!

princesslune · December 2012

Does anyone know if there is a way to add an NPC to your party with the NW foundry?
For example if I wanted an NPC to join the party temporarily even if it's just for cosmetic
RP purposes? Or do I need to have multiple copies of the NPC contact in the game
as you move through the map? I ask because I'm working on a module that would be
a lot more believable if I could add the NPC to the group. I'd settle for non-combat
if it broke scaling. For example I would be happy just to have the NPC follow the party
and remain and interactable contact with a dialogue tree, of course then I suppose
I'd also want the dialogue to change as we reached certain waypoints.

elewyndyl · December 2012

princesslune wrote: »

I do know quite a few people who are eagerly awaiting the release of this game, but it does seem to be limited somewhat to
the PnP crowd. Although lately I have to say I usually play DDO and it's been a ghost town, makes me wonder if some of that
fan base won't come over to NWO.

I have noticed many of you are DDO players. I would not call me DDO player since I played it only one week when it became "free" to play. You got so little exp back then that if you did not pay that it could compete with EQ for slowest levelup speed.

There are many fans of NeverwinterNights 1 and 2 that will enjoy this. Some of them have even played the old Baldurs Gate games. I am a MMO player with played Age of Conan and WOW together counted time is more then 4 years.

princesslune wrote: »

l though lately I have to say I usually play DDO and it's been a ghost town, makes me wonder if some of that
fan base won't come over to NWO.

Yes or from other Dungeons Dragons related games liker BG and NWN mentioned above. That some of us are WOW veterans like me and my brother is not uncommon since in year 2010 WOW was at top glory and had more then 12 million active players which is still World record.

My point is there will come players from many games. The big DECEMBER News have been about PvP Battlegrounds for big groups of players(not limited to 5 vs 5 players) and mounts that can be used for travel, but not combat.

The PvP stuff will certainly attract other then PnP players also. On top of that in future after release players can create PvP Battlegrounds.

However yes I have played PnP also, but I like both PvE and PvP. I don't know the answer to your NPC question. However sooner or later BETA starts. Your Avatar name(meant as compliment) reminds of Selune Goddess of good lychantrophes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sel%C3%BBne

I hope some of you creators make good horror(Werewolves and/or other stuff) adventures and I like both Action and Horror movies.

gillrmn · December 2012

princesslune wrote: »

Does anyone know if there is a way to add an NPC to your party with the NW foundry?
For example if I wanted an NPC to join the party temporarily even if it's just for cosmetic
RP purposes? ...

It may or may not be possible. It is possible somewhat in STO by using mobs and putting them to npc, but that feature may or may not be there. There is no official support in STO for putting people on your side (or to put mobs to pet behavior as they say).

sliverspark · December 2012

Xearrik,

I learned a long time ago as a DM that video games are video games, and PnP games are PnP games; they don't mix. Now I will say that using digital tools for your PnP game is wildly fun. I used to play music and ambience through the Aurora Engine with my sessions and it got to the point that my players didn't want to play without it. It really added to the experience, and was a lot of fun for everyone, me included. Another good digital tool is using a dungeon-maker for miniature combat; and projecting it on to your game table. These and other things have enhanced my PnP sessions quite a bit.

What you are describing is basically a day in the life of a NWN Persistent World DM. You can follow your players, and essentially play with them as a DM without them ever really knowing, (that doesn't go without saying that a lot of players could tell if a DM was present, but they liked playing with them anyway). It's just two different types of games man. I have a few friends that I have played PnP with that will most likely play through the stuff I make with this game. And for me, because I don't have time to play the DM much these days, having The Foundry as an outlet is awesome, because it makes everything 100 times easier. Humble advice though: enjoy it for what it is, not what you would like it to be.

PnP in NW

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